Author Archive for Debra Mendes

Marketing is one of the most important systems in your business.

“The Marketing Checkup helped me focus on what unique qualities I have to offer both new and returning clients. I now have more clarity and confidence in my marketing approach.” -Ron Drotos, Keyboard Improv

Complete the Marketing Checkup survey below. It only takes 5 to 10 minutes of your time and you will receive insight for moving your business forward.

After we receive your information we will contact you to schedule a free, 30 minute session to review your current marketing, give you a quick snapshot on the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and suggest several ways to improve your marketing system right now. The more information you provide, the better the information you provide, the better feedback we can provide.

Your business deserves to soar. Start by taking our Business Assessment

The Business Assessment is the first step in our process toward helping you achieve your business growth goals. This initial step allows you to get to know us, and allows us to learn about your business at no cost to you other than your time. We believe the most under utilized tool in business is listening. So before we do anything, we want to listen, learn and understand your business and the unique challenges you face.

How It Works

Complete Part 1 of our survey below

We will email Part 2 of the survey following the receipt of Part 1

We will arrange a meeting to review the information and discuss your business needs once we receive Part 2 of the survey.

Following our discussion, you will receive an observation report, which is based on the information we review together. The report will contain high-level recommendations that we feel will positively affect your business.

Throughout this short process, we will have the opportunity to get to know each other, and can determine if we are both interested in furthering our relationship.

Lets get started! Complete Part 1 of the Business Assessment survey

Your Name

Your Email

Your Phone

Business Name

Your Title

About your business:

Website Address

1. What does your business do?

2. How many years has the business existed?

3. How many customers do you currently serve?

4. What is the ownership structure?

5. How many people do you employ (employees and contractors)?

6. What products / services does the business offer?

7. Who is your customer? How would you describe them?

8. Who do you see as your competition?

9. What significant goals are set for the business?

10. Describe what you believe are the greatest concerns facing your business.

(Optional) Do you have any additional information or comments you would like to share with us at this time?

Why you must build a solid strategy before you do anything else.

Using a smart, well-crafted marketing strategy is critical to your business achieving marketing goals, but many people misunderstand what a marketing strateg y truly is. Marketing strategy isn’t your goals or objectives, it is a concise explanation of how you plan to reach those objectives.

Enter your name and email address to receive your complimentary eBook

Content is the key to your marketing strategy.

Content is the key to your marketing strategy. It is how your message is told, how you guide your customers through the Marketing Hourglass and,ultimately, how you convert prospects into clients. In this eBook you will learn:

How to use the ke yword research outside of SEO

How to create an editorial calendar that guides your content
creation

What to write and when to write it

How to dominate your local search rankings

How to repurpose previously created content

Enter your name and email address to receive your complimentary eBook

Every business has a brand — Are you building yours intentionally?

A small business that understands branding and marketing and the relationship between the two will find that attracting and retaining customers is not really that hard. The struggle in marketing often comes from the belief that branding is just for products or big companies. This leads to the disconnect between who your company is being and what your company is doing.

Download this guide for a 12-month blueprint to growing your online presence.

This guide provides a 12-month plan of attack or blueprint for working on your presence in the coming year. This “live by the calendar” approach helps business owners, who wear many hats, get above the overwhelm by taking it topic by topic and manageable bit by bit in an attempt to forge something that looks like continuous progress.

Download this ebook and learn the secrets of getting more done.

Today’s working professionals have to carefully consider the time and the energy they’ll need to focus on new skills like publishing, speaking and building a platform as well as sales planning, prospecting, and serving clients. This requires a new way of thinking about how time and energy is allocated, which takes a great deal of stamina.

Enter your name and email address to receive your complimentary eBook

It’s been reported that the average adult makes around 35,000 decisions daily. If you are getting 8 hours of sleep (Oh, how I wish), that means during you 16 hours of awake time you are making over 2000 decisions every hour.

Some will be ordinary: What should I wear or what should I eat for breakfast? Some will be more important: Should we take on more customers?

If you are a small business owner, many of those decisions will be related to your business. Decisions involving staff, customers, operations, finance and many others are daily requirements for running business.

Marketing decisions are also included and will are some of the most important.

But let’s face it, some of these decisions will be wrong.

It’s said that learning from mistakes is essential to success. What often is not added is that if you can learn from the mistakes of other, you can save yourself a lot of time, money, and frustration.

A marketing mistake I see repeated by so many business owners is jumping from one marketing tactic to another with no clear understanding of why the new “bright shiny thingy” will be better than the last. The thought (or lack of) seems to be “it’s new, and everyone else seems to be doing it. I should too”. That is a big mistake. Without understanding why you should spend your marketing dollars doing something, your expectations of the results, and how you’ll measure you are likely to be disappointed. When that happens, guess what? You’ll jump to the next “bright shiny thingy”.

I see the cycle repeated over and over, much to the delight of the companies selling this month’s “bright shiny thingy”.

Did you make marketing mistakes in 2014?

Want to NOT make those same marketing mistakes this year?

Spend time concentrating on marketing strategy first – before making the decision of which marketing tactic you’ll use. You will save yourself time, money, and lots of frustration.

Not sure where to start? Give us an email or call. We will be happy to help you reduce your marketing mistakes and achieve meaningful results from your marketing efforts in 2015.

As a small business owner, we are consistently asked to invest our dollars into all kinds of new and interesting marketing lead generation tactics. SEO, pay per click, Groupon, Deal of the Day, Local Marketplaces, Facebook, and local advertisements, all call to us with the siren song of more customers and revenue. But how do you decide which marketing tactics are best for your business when they all claim to be the “one”? The answer lies in the understanding you have about your ideal customer and how you connect with them. Here are three steps that will help you make better marketing decisions.

The first step is to know your target market and ideal customer. You’ve probably read or heard that a million times and don’t necessarily disagree with the statement. But do you really have to know your target market – really know your ideal customer? The answer is yes. In fact, the better you define and know who you are trying to attract the better you will be able to attract them. Knowing the demographics of your customer is a good place to start but if that’s all you know you are missing the best part. Their actions and behaviors are a much better indicator of good fit than demographics alone. What do they value? How do they get their information? Who influences them? These are all questions that can be used to give you a better understanding your target market and ideal customer.

The second step is to reveal the elements of your business that your ideal customer will most appreciate. Maybe it’s simply the least expensive alternative to a mandatory situation; auto inspections, for example, or the process you have for easy no hassle returns. Making it easy for your prospects to discover you is the first step in the Know, Like, and Trust journey of your prospect becoming a customer.

The third step is to devise a simple reporting and measurement system that will allow you to compare marketing spend in consistent ways. These can be; number of repeat business transactions from new customers, total number of new customers gained, total revenue gain, total cost, etc. Keep the measures simple and focused on your goals. Without the knowledge of which marketing activities are working and which are not you’ll be doomed to repeat mistakes and end up wasting marketing dollars.

These three elements; knowing your ideal customer, what elements of your business will most connect with them, and the results of your investments, will allow you to clear away the fog of too many choices and make the marketing decisions that are truly beneficial and impactful for your business.